UEFA launched the new Nations League with a draw on Wednesday in a bid to improve the current state of international football when there are no competitive tournaments being played.

The idea of the tournament, which was initially being planned back in 2011, is to eliminate the number of meaningless friendlies between nations and to allow countries to compete against fairer opposition.

The competition will see a total of 55 teams being involved, who will all be split into four different leagues, lettered A, B, C, and D, with matches to be played between September and November 2018, with the Final Four matches to be played in June 2019.

The way the teams are sorted will be based on their ranking spot at the end of the 2018 World Cup Qualifiers, which happened to be the last competitive competition they were all in.

Those four leagues will then be split into groups of either three or four teams, who will play in a format where the top four teams from B, C and D are promoted and the bottom four teams from A, B and C will be relegated.

These changes will then take place in the next competition, which is scheduled to take place in 2020.

The winners of each of the four groups in League A will be considered the best nations within Europe and will go on to compete in the Final Four competition, where they fight to be crowned the Nations League champion.

The Groups

The groups are as follows:

League A

Group 1: Germany, France, Netherlands

Group 2: Belgium, Switzerland, Iceland

Group 3: Portugal, Italy, Poland

Group 4: Spain, England, Croatia

League B

Group 1: Slovakia, Ukraine, Czech Republic

Group 2: Russia, Sweden, Turkey

Group 3: Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Northern Ireland

Group 4: Wales, Republic of Ireland, Denmark

League C

Group 1: Scotland, Albania, Israel

Group 2: Hungary, Greece, Finland, Estonia

Group 3: Slovenia, Norway, Bulgaria, Cyprus

Group 4: Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Lithuania

League D

Group 1: Georgia, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Andorra

Group 2: Belarus, Luxembourg, Moldova, San Marino

Group 3: Azerbaijan, Faroe Islands, Malta, Kosovo

Group 4: FYR Macedonia, Armenia, Liechtenstein, Gibraltar

Betting thoughts

Since the draw of the groups, there has already been plenty of people offering their favourites to win the competition, with many bookmakers already offering odds on potential outright winners.

It is widely thought that Germany and Spain both have an equal chance of winning the inaugural tournament, with both nations being largely successful with the major tournaments in recent history,

Belgium, with all their stars, has also been touted as a potential winner, whilst France are also strongly fancied among many.

It will be interesting to see how the countries all setup, with it being the first tournament of its kind, and will no doubt add a bit of healthy competition between the nations competing.